March 23, 2013

"... while the man is saying: I'm not willing to give you 50 cents for that Lexus."

A great analogy, used to explain why sexual rejection is much more humiliating for women, in a wonderful monologue called "sex-seeking, men, women and dominance hierarchies," which I'm watching because commenter Jaynie said:

Hey, ha! The MRM advocate posts youtube talks on men's rights on [their] "Girl writes what" channel, She referred to Ann Althouse as "the philosopher, Ann Althouse". She referred to you thus introducing an older post of yours....

The reference to me occurs about about 5 minutes — referring to this old post — and it is not a major part of the talk and not why I'm embedding this. I'm linking because it's a great and fascinating discussion. Though it's almost 40 minutes long, it is not full of the sort of longueurs you'd expect in a 40-minute video:

If you're thinking of jumping into the comments based solely on the quoted analogy, especially if you're itching to attack, please first listen to it in context, beginning at 10:00.

I used to know a lot of these NCFM people. They really do sit around and talk all day about this kind of shit... particularly the "who rejects who stuff," as if that's the biggest burden any human has ever faced.

A large percentage of the men involved in men's issues are gays who were once married to women, or bisexual men. (Divorce can be incredibly mean when a man leaves his wife for another man!) One of my friends who's involved in NCFM is worried a woman is going to somehow trick him into spilling some of his seed, so she can collect it and indebt him forever for the support of a child.

I have no idea how people make love as complicated as the gender identity obsessives do.

With current birth control methods and a justice system that requires that a man who impregnates a woman pay child support for 18+ years wouldn't the current analogy be that the woman is offering 10 minutes of her time at a potential cost to the man having of providing a multiple new Lexus (Lexi?)for the next 20 years. Sure, if the woman does this, then she would endure 9 months of pregnancy and 4 years of lactation, etc. but she gets an acceptable return on her investment, especially when coupled with tax breaks and government programs.While the man only got those 10 minutes (or 2 minutes). A candy bar.

I did not say a great ROI, just a ROI better than her current prospects, perhaps. Or, rather, perceived prospects.

A) I don't think female preying mantises have any compunction about losing social status, but to my knowledge they aren't initiating sex. Same with birds, and many other animals. Therefore her reasoning females don't initiate sex due to losing social status seems weak. In fact, when she points out it's a Lexus, shouldn't it reflect more on the idiot male? The simpler answer is females simply don't need to do this, and part of the mating ritual indicates sexual fitness.

B) She doesn't seem to understand the great shaping power of male sexual behavior of women on men. Men have to be aggressive because that's what women want. If men don't do what women want, they don't get the chick. They are aggressive because that's what gets the chick. Mystery solved.

C) Where are all these women who are raping men? Men fantasize about it, what's the holdup? Let's go.

Agree with her point about men and women and the trade-offs. The woman has more to lose. Ironic, that men are more driven, but they suffer more when yielding to temptation (rape, underage sex, etc.) That's not fair, is it?

Vicki Hearne in the chapter "Beastly Behaviors" of _Bandit_ says that women can't sustain the obsessive interest men have in a single thing like math or chess, preferring instead interacting unresolved situations, the more complex the better, to hold her interest.

It's seeming to be easier to just do it the old fashioned way. Commit to someone for life and live within the bonds of marriage. It had it's downsides, but most people just accepted it and found ways to be happy together. Or they found ways to be miserable. In either case they kept it to themselves, which I'm beginning to believe makes a lot of sense.

With current birth control methods and a justice system that requires that a man who impregnates a woman pay child support for 18+ years wouldn't the current analogy be that the woman is offering 10 minutes of her time at a potential cost to the man having of providing a multiple new Lexus (Lexi?)for the next 20 years.

I think she is trying to look at the underlying biological motivations, and how that has shaped male/female behavior. It's not about our current sense of "Fairness."

This woman is very intelligent---probably has a high T-rate (not her more masculine face). She argues with numbers, which most females eschew and try for "feeling" and "broad" words that have little concrete meaning.

In other words, she won't be convincing any broads of her argument except those already in her camp. Only men will be swayed.

I just watched the whole thing and I think she's got a lot of good points and is likely right. When she was talking about male status and the need for men to seek status in whatever way, it reminded me of an article by a "liberal gun guy" (someone or other linked to it recently) where he explained that these men is essentially low status jobs, middle class, etc., got a concealed carry permit they got a great deal of self esteem from viewing themselves as protectors and forces for good, as they'd taken on the potential role of the person who would help if bad things happened. Unexpectedly (not) the comment thread below the article contained a great deal of scorn for the notion that any man should want to feel good about himself.

"Carjacking a Lexus is a big deal, but not stealing a chocolate bar..."

And Lot's daughters did not rape their father, but that girl who got drunk was raped and we shouldn't be confused about how bad that was. (Actually, the passage in Genesis is pretty clear that Lot's daughters were very wrong but we don't view the two things the same way, which was a cogent point I think.)

Also, I don't think that this lady was endorsing the opinion that it's no big deal when women rape because she clearly said that male rapists seem often to have been made by women rapists.

Among people who mostly ignore morality in sex, I suppose she's pretty clever. But it's a signifcant and cold mistake to ignore morality in sexual decisions. Often when a female decides to have sex with a male or when a male decides to care for his children well, it is because the individual unselfishly loves the partner and feels more-or-less that this love will make the world a better more beautiful place. Sure, sex is a way that this love is mediated, but that does not mean people behave unselfishly for selfish reasons, which is an absurd contradiction. Unselfishness is the opposite of selfishness--they are not at all the same. Being the kind of person who is unselfish may be rewarding, e.g., in the competition for sex--if it weren't rewarding to some degree, then such unselfishness wouldn't have evolved--but that is different from being unselfish in the sense of doing unselfish things, which by definition is not at all self-rewarding--it's unselfish. There are two ways one can be unselfish: it's like the ser/estar distinction one learns in Spanish class.

I'm puzzled why someone would go to all the trouble to write that 40 minute long talk and do nothing to make the viewing experience enjoyable. The crappy kitchen background, the idiotic wife-beater style shirt, the unattractive boyish haircut, stumbling over her own words, and the cigarette smoke wafting in front of the camera - was this done to be deliberately repulsive, or is she that oblivious? And if she is that oblivious, what does that say about her analysis? Like what else is she missing?

I also get a strong impression that she cherry-picks the studies she uses for her propaganda. Well, maybe that's just what sociologists do.

Well, if the Lexus had to spend 3-5 days in the shop per month and raided your bank account for half the money in there, you might only want to offer 50 cents for it until you've gone through the test ride at least.

That was really very good. She may be a Feminist, but she seems to be an honest one...and she likes our Professor's mind too.

concerning "aggression" being linked to sex in men's experience, that can be true in a war context where aggression is all valuable. But in peace time a rapist loses all social status as she points out.

Yesterday a sports commentator's show mentioned that a commenter had gotten into serious trouble for saying that one NFL team that signed another's star free agents had raped the other team.

But saying the word rape can only mean men being violent sexually is showing the judges own mindset.

Rapine has always meant seizing another's things. Snatch and grab robbery, the Christian Rapture, and an army that loots a conquered town's property are all rapine examples. The women being snatched are only incidental.

That was really very good. She may be a Feminist, but she seems to be an honest one...and she likes our Professor's mind too.

My thoughts exactly. Is she a feminist? Seems like she is a truth seeker.

I still think she is wrong about the social bad of females wanting sex. She contradicts herself about this.

Second, I wonder if she has considered that with 20% of the male chimps/gorillas/etc., procreating, and nearly all of the females, what does that say about evolution of females vs. males? It seems there is a vector for male evolution not afforded females.

Of course, as I've said before, females are the ones shaping male sexual behavior, and this is quite in line with that view.

I just finished viewing the video and pronounce it very good. There is a lot there to piss off a lot of people -- feminists, the religious, the lower status males.

There was an interesting comment she made regarding mountain gorillas and how only 5% of the males have sex. This got me to thinking that, as out society falls apart due to socialism and feminism, we are seeing a return to our more primitive condition. Sexual activity outside marriage is increasing because of feminism, but only for women and a few, high status men. The majority of men are left to video games and porn.

The ones left with video games and porn are better off for the experience. Less chance of disease, less paying child support, less alimony taking money out of his pocket to fund female desires and lifestyles. More time to carefully pick who you date while keeping the modern legal pitfalls of relationships with females in mind.

If fact, this is kind of how I functioned until I found my wife. But, it wasn't video games; it was outdoors activities and porn.

Note that it isn't just high status males having a lot of sex, but rather, a lot of pretend high status males having probably even more sex. That is the essence of the pickup culture - guys learning high status/dominant moves. Most of them are not high status males, because those that really are, don't need to practice the moves, because they come naturally.

What has always amazed me is that PU moves actually work, and some of these guys get laid an awfully lot, often by beautiful women, using techniques that look awfully transparent, at least to me. Which is indicia, I think, that a lot of women react emotionally, and not intellectually, to males and their approaches.

I find her points pretty much spot on and obvious, except the female raping part. Something wrong with those statistics. Just don't match my experience, or people I know, but could still be true.

What is striking to me is how obvious this stuff is from from viewing both nature and human interaction, and yet so counter to the modern narrative we live under.

It seems to me that many people who would scoff at those who refuse to accept science in things like evolution, are the same ones so adamant about resisting the obvious facts about male and female innate differences. In both cases, it's wanting to believe something trumping the evidence. Yet only one side wallows in the assumption that they are intellectually superior and fact based.

"Vicki Hearne in the chapter "Beastly Behaviors" of _Bandit_ says that women can't sustain the obsessive interest men have in a single thing like math or chess, preferring instead interacting unresolved situations, the more complex the better, to hold her interest."

That's phrased in a way that makes females seem lacking, but you could just as well say that men "can't sustain" interest in complex, unresolved situations and they prefer instead to fixate on a single well-defined task.

Why is the Preying Mantis thing so rare if it makes such clear evolutionary sense? In some species it makes more sense for the male to stay alive to breed with others, but it is still rare for him to self-sacrifice even if he can only breed once.

Have you ever watched "Fast, Cheap and Out of Control"? One of the subjects of the documentary is a lion tamer, who explains why he wields a chair: The animal can only focus on one thing at at time and the 4 legs of the chair confuse the hell out of him.

There's actually a site called Darwinian conservatism, by Larry Arnhart.

I suspect most religious and traditional folks are happier with such an analysis, because at least the Darwinian logic can challenge the gender feminists suspended in a state of anarchy and rebellion against "male aggression." Behind their reductionism is often the dog's breakfast of postmodernism and critical theory. Some are just lesbians and angry women who never have understood men. They come across as hysterical harpies who wouldn't survive outside of a university.

One could expand on her theory, and point out that equality lets women into our important, competitive institutions, changing their character and function, and requires a commitment to fundamentally change how those institutions operate, and thus our society.

That's what's been happening.

If they're suddenly filled with half women, the dynamic changes, and some men will go elsewhere to compete or those energies will be neither rewarded nor cultivated as they once were. I know this is part of my life experience.

Darwinian thinking stops short of endorsing Natural Law or religious tradition, our free will coming from a transcendent God, as Stephen Meigs points out above. Evolution may be combined with other theories to fill the hole of meaning, group membership, identity etc.

As Bob Wright demonstrates what fills the hole could be Buddhism as a comparative religion, Marxist Materialism, a faith in the products of reason and the social sciences etc. or neuroscience, feminism, environmentalism and progressive solidarity etc.

"you could just as well say that men "can't sustain" interest in complex, unresolved situations and they prefer instead to fixate on a single well-defined task."

I think men need to fix it, to solve it once and for all more than women who are more process oriented. The men are simply much more goal oriented. Which I think explains the difference in work habits. Women can do it, but it is not as satisfying, and therefore less motivating to simply get right to the finish line.

The video speaker recognizes the damage to a female's reputation, self-esteem and status when she is rejected by a male. However, she doesn't seem to think a male suffers an equal damage when he is rejected by a female. Aren't reputation, self-esteem and status even more important to males than females if the society is one where men often succeed because they dominate, but women succeed because they cooperate?

That's phrased in a way that makes females seem lacking, but you could just as well say that men "can't sustain" interest in complex, unresolved situations and they prefer instead to fixate on a single well-defined task.

Hearne puts it, long quote off my HD maybe it's online somewhere:

``The ultimate model of an activity that is at once unquestionably intelligent and intellectual and that also seems to divide the sexes is mathematics. The maleness of a mathematics department is explained either in terms of an allegedly greater male ability in mathematics, or in terms of sex-role steereotyping. You know the sort of things: ``As boys learn their sex roles, they identify with the notion that they should excel in mathematics. Girls ... learn that mathematical ability is unfeminine,'' in the words of Diane F. Halpern's _Sex Differences in Cognitive Abilities_. (But the logician Ruth Marcus reports that there are feminists who argue that logic and physics are ``phallic,'' and that therefore women who go into those fields sell out, or buy out, or something. They used to be unfeminine, now they are unfeminist.)

``MIT mathematician Gian-Carlo Rota said to me one time that he thought both positions were ridiculous. ``There are plenty of women with all the talent for math anyone could want,'' he said. ``But women leave math when they discover that you can't do it without sustaining world-class illusions, such as the belief that grips one while one is working on a very difficult paper on a very obscure corner of a difficult subject, that here, at last, everything will be settled once and for all.'' Interestingly, he doesn't talk about the desire to excel, at math or anything else, as the point - he doesn't mention competitiveness.

``..Rota identifies the illusions necessary to mathematics with the faith that sustains a friend of his who is a priest. Women refuse such illusions or, say, don't care about them, are able to remain relatively calm in the face of the fact that there are issues that won't be settled once and for all, such as the exact nature of the universe or exactly what Daffodil means when she cocks her head and sticks her tongue out at you. I do not mean that women working with animals are satisfied with oversimplified or partial theories of animals, only that their minds are complex enough to sustain their contact with what they do know while noting also where their knowledge of Daffodil leaves off''

``...I keep thinking: Men are afraid of horses. They are afraid of horses because neither their professional integrity nor logic will take them to a horse, and because they do not know how to turn, deflect, a horse's fear or rage. If Dobbin says, ``You'd better get off right now, because I am going to kill you, wrangler!'' you don't of course ignore this, but it is possible to say, ``Oh, I don't think you really want to do that. Why don't we try something else?'' (Just as Moses' wife said to Yahweh when Yahweh was intent on killing Moses.) As it happens, a talented young male rider can be as formidably equipped with equestrian tact as anyone, but in the general run of things in the middle and upper classes in this country, it is the young women who are more likely than the young men to come up with a tactful rather than frightened response, and when they become foolish about this later - silliness is a feminine failing - they will say that they knew the horse had good intentions all along.

``For centuries, unable to prove Dobbin's good intentions, men have instead proven their courage on horseback...''

That's phrased in a way that makes females seem lacking, but you could just as well say that men "can't sustain" interest in complex, unresolved situations and they prefer instead to fixate on a single well-defined task.

There's why there's something called women's entertainment.

Long quote from Thurber on Soap Opera

In many soap operas, a permanent question is either implied or actually posed every day by the serial narrators. These questions are usually expressed in terms of doubt, indecision, or inner struggle. Which is more important, a woman's heart or a mother's duty? Could a woman be happy with a man fifteen years older than herself? Should a mother tell her daughter that the father of the rich man she loves ruined the fortunes of the daughter's father? Should a mother tell her son that his father, long believed dead, is alive, well, and a criminal? Can a good, clean Iowa girl find happiness as the wife of New York's most famous matinee idol? Can a beautiful young stepmother, can a widow with two children, can a restless woman married to a preoccupied doctor, can a mountain girl in love with a millionaire, can a woman married to a hopeless cripple, can a girl who married an amnesia case - can they find soap-opera happiness and the good, soap-opera way of life? No, they can't - not, at least, in your time and mine. The characters in Soapland and their unsolvable preplexities will be marking time on the air long after you and I are gone, for we must grow old and die, whereas the people of Soapland have a magic immunity to age, like Peter Pan and the Katzenjammer Kids. When you and I are in Heaven with the angels, the troubled people of Ivorytown, Rinsoville, Anacinburg, and Crisco Corners, forever young or forever middle-aged, will still be up to their ears in inner struggle, soul searching, and everlasting frustration.

James Thurber ``II - Ivorytown, Rinsoville, Anacinburg, and Crisco Corners'' _Soapland_ in _The Beast in Me and Other Animals_ p.222

That's phrased in a way that makes females seem lacking, but you could just as well say that men "can't sustain" interest in complex, unresolved situations and they prefer instead to fixate on a single well-defined task.

You could say that, but it does not follow logically unless you've established it's an either-or condition.

"A man having a little "me time" in the shower was attacked by his girlfriend.

The Warwick Daily News reports that the woman then "kicked in the shower door, smashed a large television and 'attacked' her partner's mother when [the mother] tried to phone police" after she caught him masturbating.

The woman (who was not named for "legal reasons") was sentenced to three months in prison after pleading guilty to breaching a domestic violence

order.However, she was immediately paroled without serving any jail time, the Daily News reports.

I just finished viewing the video and pronounce it very good. There is a lot there to piss off a lot of people -- feminists, the religious, the lower status males.

I too found the video excellent, probably because I am always trying to figure out the how and why of things. Maybe the trick is to just listen to it, as I did on my iPhone, and not try to really watch it.

A couple of small nits. I think that the 5% of gorilla males fathering offspring is wrong - maybe 5% at any one time, but that would be a 20/1 ratio. That would imply 20 member harems and no turnover, or even higher ratios, if turnover of the males, when sick or old, were factored in, and that just doesn't fit with somewhat equal numbers of males and females being born. Definitely though a significant ratio, given the sexual dimorphism of the species. I think that a 5/1 ratio at any one time would likely be more accurate.

Another nit is the self-reporting of sexual assault, etc. by the two sexes. The problem is that there is a significant resistance by males to reporting such on their own part, given the social obrium of admitting that you couldn't get sex without such. I think that we had this discussion earlier, about guys taking advantage of drunk females, and am pretty sure that the percentage of guys who have done so at least once in their lives is far higher than they would admit.

But both of these issues have to do with the underlying studies, and this woman's analysis would probably not really vary if I am right, and the studies are wrong.

One of the interesting things that she got into was why women cannot, or most often do not, compete at the highest levels in male dominated professions. This has significant bearing on women's equal pay claims - if hours and years worked in a field are factored in, there really isn't a sexual difference in pay, and that pay difference that feminists are always trying to erase is almost entirely a result of women not working as hard as the top men in their fields.

Males compete with males for sexaul access to females. But, that is mostly formalized with modern humans, with most of our competition for male dominence being in other arenas, such as business, etc. Females can get male semen without competing with other women for it, which is most females in these other species have offspring, while a lot of beta males do not. So, the single minded drive that males show, in contrast to most females, in their chosen field is not necessary for the latter, but has traditionally been necessary for males. So, males have developed the ability to focus on a single objective or goal better than females have (on average, of course), and this ability to focus single mindedly is why they invariably dominate in male oriented fields.

But, maybe part of the disfunction that we are seeing now is a result of males concentrating and focusing in arenas that will mostly not get them breeding opportunities - for example video gaming. While the top lawyers are going to have outsized breeding opportunites, most video gamers are not, at least not now, with the low social regard society in general, and women, in particular, have of that avocation. But, this is also probably true with a lot of other modern male persuits, like mountain biking, climbing, etc. Probably because that top lawyer has both money and power, while the top video gamer likely has neither. At least not now. Maybe in the future. We shall see.

However, she doesn't seem to think a male suffers an equal damage when he is rejected by a female.

Sure, but back to the $50k candy bar analogy. When the guy gets rejected, she is rejecting his 20 minutes of time and several ounces of sperm and seminal fluid, which is rapidly replace. When the gal gets rejected, he is rejecting her 9 months of pregnancy, 4 years of lactation, and 18 years of raising the resulting child.

Sure, the costs have changed significantly since our formative years as a species. We have birth control, DNA testing for fatherhood, child support, etc. But, as this woman pointed out, we are talking "wet wear", very basic programming, many millions of years old. Good, reliable, safe birth control, along with genetic testing, were developed within many of our lifetimes, which means that they have had almost zero impact on our genetic/evolutionary programming.

Women don't see the job as the most important thing" WHen they dominate the field, and hold this priority it tends to mean more part time hours and tradeoffs like that (since they, by and large don't want to put in the 80 hour work weeks that men do).Apply this to the glass ceiling argument and you'll realize that if there is such a thing (There isn't) its' largely because of womens own pyschology and not because of any male patriarchies.

Women don't do the jobs that men do in the same number that men do that are dangerous but might pay more. Women don't put in the hours that men do and take off time for child birth etc. As such any pay discrepencies that might exist have to take in these differing work habits in the average.

There are exceptions to every rule of course. My mother was one. She worked her ass off in a variety of jobs through her life. So its not true across the board. (that's why it's an average)

My first wife was crazy. She hated it when I called her crazy, but she was crazy. One thing about crazy women is that they are crazy in bed. She was that. She's gone now, she smoked herself to death. I don't know if it was worth it or not but I have two sons and nine grand children. I love them all.

She doesn't give any attention to the concept of "sneaky fucker". While the alpha males are locking horns on the mountain top, the beta males are taking advantage of their absence......The hours and efforts needed to climb the status hierarchy doesn't leave one with a lot of libidinal energy. The tennis pro usually gets more sex than the CEO. And some guys choose to become tennis pros for just that reason. Economy of effort.

For those of you who challenge the idea that rejection is as socially damaging to men, perhaps it is. However, when discussing offers of sex *clearly* made on little to no acquaintance, or within relationships, men experience way more rejection, on the whole, than women do.

One interesting experiment sent attractive male and female confederates to proposition strangers on the street--to either ask them to coffee, ask them to "go back to my apartment" or ask them to have sex.

80% of the men said yes to an offer of sex, and not one of the women did. Not a single one, which leads to the statistical conundrum of not even being able to say, "men are 3000% more likely than women be open to casual sex with strangers". We can't know how much more likely when one of the numbers is zero. We do, however, know that the most promiscuous lesbians studied report under 100 lifetime partners, while the most promiscuous gay men report in the thousands.

This leads me to believe that turning down sex will be considered a more stereotypical female behavior, and not abnormal.

A man propositions a strange woman in a bar, it is largely expected that she will reject him. It is expected that she has plausible reasons to do so that may not have anything to do with the quality of the man (unless she words it so: "As if, loser!") She may be "playing hard to get", a common way for women to increase the perception of their mate value, or she may not be "the kind of girl who has sex with just anyone", or she may have concerns (which others will find entirely reasonable) about her safety.

A man turns down a woman in the same situation, it will be seen as an anomaly. As the experiment I detailed above shows, it is not typical male behavior. Something must be wrong with her, or with him.

Which is why, almost always, when a man rejects a woman's offer of NSA sex, she will react badly. She must shift the assumptions others make in his direction--there is nothing wrong with her, he must be "gay" or "a wuss" or "not a real man" or "have a little dick".

A man's perceived mate value often has to do with how many women he can convince to sleep with him--which makes sense, because he can sire many offspring that way, more than any woman could. A woman's perceived mate value has to do with how many men she can afford to reject, so she can optimize the quality of each offspring. Every male she rejects can actually inflate her value--"Yeah, I'm too good for him, and for him, and for that guy over there, yeah, I can afford to hold out for the top dog."

Considering all of these things together, and considering that men, over the course of their sexual lives, experience WAY more rejections than women tend to, if rejection negatively impacted men to the same degree as it does when it (very infrequently) happens to women, even the most successful PUAs would rarely to never get laid.

I hope that explains my reasoning a bit.

As for William and his "sneaky fuckers", I've talked about them in a couple of videos. In fact, I believe a group of sneaky fuckers (subordinate and investment oriented) and our hominid grandmothers' increasing sexual preference for them is what led us all to this place--big brains, civilization, all that.

It's my belief, in fact, that the first monogamous human couples were cheating on the dominant tournament males (baboons engage in this behavior, too, btw), which would go a long way to explain why humans, exclusively it seems, consider sex as something to be done in private.

giirlwriteswhat -- thanks for the video. Got me thinking a lot, and, yes, explains some of the unfairness that I always saw about us guys always having to be the aggressor in these matters, while it was the gals who always seemed to want the relationships.

I found interesting the idea that the reason that guys can focus on a single goal more than women can is because of our redirected aggression. And, yes, I think that we, as a species, needed to redirect it into more symbolic competitive arenas, in order to live communally. But, there are other species that engage in symbolic competition, instead of the more physical type, for access to breeding opportunities. One problem with physical competition is that it is too deadly for our species. We are roughly monogamous, and there is a distinct advantage from a species (and single woman) point of view for having roughly as many fathers as mothers raising kids, since in our formative years as a species, males would typically not bring home enough resources to support more the kids of too many women. This was, I think, made quite a bit worse by our long dependency as children. Many other species can afford much more deadly male competition for mates because the mothers can take care of their limited number of young by themselves until they are able to survive on their own fairly easily. But, for us, too many males would likely die, and therefore more young would starve, and therefore we moved to mostly largely symbolic competitions.

Would be interested in your cheating posts. Also, read a book a number of years ago titled The Red Queen, that was devoted to the running evolutionary war between the two sexes. Some relevance here.

One of the things I find quite interesting is trying to figure out how humans managed to dampen in-group male violence, compared with, say, bonobos, who also have comparatively little in-group male/male violence.

It would seem to me that bonobo females happened on a very straightforward strategy to do this--female promiscuity. Males need not compete for sexual opportunities, because they are all getting some sex on a regular basis. In fact, sex is utilized by bonobos for conflict resolution (sometimes between same-sex partners).

It also eliminates competitive infanticide, which is a common behavior among tournament males--kill the offspring of females you haven't mated with, so they'll go into estrus and mate with you. This is an effective male strategy in any species where male tenure as the head of a harem may end at any moment due to a usurper, where females are not sexually receptive except when fertile, and where they do not become fertile again until infants have passed a certain point of independence.

We know that chimpanzees are smart enough to know whose kids are whose, though we have no way of knowing whether they realize sex makes babies. Regardless, competitive infanticide is common in other, less intelligent tournament species--a behavior that seems to be tied to a fixed action pattern that tells males, "be ambivalent or tolerant of the offspring of any female I've had sex with".

Unfortunately for bonobos, the female strategy stumbled upon to temper violent in-group male/male competition (through male/male violence and competitive infanticide) does nothing to harness or redirect those energies toward other things. Granted, they've only been doing things this way for about 2 million years, while we've been doing things are way for much longer, so perhaps in another 4 million years they'd be as smart as we are.

At the same time, however, it wasn't too long after we began to reorder our social/sexual organization that we began to expand our territory and make technological advances.

Common chimpanzees have not managed to spread much since they split off from us, and have graduated to the level of crafting and using spears for hunting, but bonobos are still at the level of using bent twigs to dig grubs out of rotted logs, and they've been geographically isolated from competitors for 2 million years, with zero external threats. Now that there are external threats, they face extinction because they simply cannot cope.

Part of the reason for this is that while there is more violent in-group competition between male common chimpanzees, there is much more cooperation between them when dealing with the outside world. They form hunting parties, and border patrols, and have even been known to wage warfare and genocidal violence against competing groups.

Female bonobo promiscuity seems to alleviate in-group male/male violence, but does not motivate males with the group toward ambition or cooperation when dealing with out-group problems, whether those are competition from other groups, environmental threats, developing technologies to deal with problems, etc.

If you're interested, I discuss the "sneaky fuckers" (and the females who loved them), and how this dynamic of females rewarding heavy father-investment was what potentially led to us being as intelligent as we are, in my video "Neoteny!" You can find it on my channel.

Thank you for your kind appraisal of the contributions sneaky fuckers have made to civilization and human development. Along these lines it should also be noted that grain was first cultivated not as a foodstuff but in order to ferment beer. And, of course, fire was first used not to keep warm but to cook meat. There you have it: the wellsprings of human civilization--of humanity itself--are beer, bbq, and sneaky fucking. And yet people look down on NASCAR fans.